Robert Mario DeNiro Jr., whose stage character is spelled as Robert De Niro (born August 17, 1943), is a highly acclaimed, two-time Academy Award-winning American film actor, director, and producer.

He is noted for his portrayal of conflicted, troubled characters, and for his enduring collaboration with director Martin Scorsese, and early work with director Brian De Palma. He is considered by many to be the greatest actor of his generation and one of the world's greatest living actors.

He is the son of the noted painter Robert De Niro, Sr.

Early life

De Niro was born in New York City, the son of Robert De Niro, Sr., an abstract expressionist painter, sculptor and Virginia Admiral. De Niro's Italian great-grandparents, Mario and Sofia Di Niro, had emigrated from Ferrazzano, in the province of Campobasso, Molise[1] in the early 20th century.[citation needed] His parents, who had met at the painting classes of Hans Hofmann in Provincetown, Massachusetts, divorced when he was two years old. De Niro grew up in the Hell's Kitchen area of New York City. His childhood nickname was Bobby Milk due to his pale complexion. De Niro is in fact only one quarter Italian.

Education

De Niro first attended the Little Red School House and was then enrolled by his mother at the High School of Music and Art in New York. He dropped out at the age of 13 and joined a Little Italy street gang. He then had a falling-out with his father, though they were eventually reconciled when, at 18, he flew to Paris to bring home his father, who had been suffering from depression.

De Niro attended the Stella Adler Conservatory, as well as Lee Strasberg's Actor's Studio (though De Niro conflicted with Strasberg's methods, and used his membership there mostly as a professional advantage). At the age of 16 he toured in Chekhov's The Bear.

Early film career

At the age of 20, in 1963, came De Niro's first film role and collaboration with Brian De Palma, when he appeared in The Wedding Party; it was not released until 1969, however. He spent much of the 1960s working in theater workshops and off-Broadway productions. He was an extra in the French film Three Rooms in Manhattan (1965), and made his film debut after he reunited with De Palma in Greetings (1968) and again in Hi, Mom (1970).

He gained popular attention with his role as a dying Major League baseball player in Bang the Drum Slowly (1973). The same year he began his fruitful collaboration with Scorsese when he played his memorable role as the smalltime Mafia hood "Johnny Boy" alongside Harvey Keitel's "Charlie" in Mean Streets. This led to a very successful relationship between the pair in films such as Taxi Driver (1976), New York, New York (1977), Raging Bull (1980), The King of Comedy (1983), Goodfellas (1990), Cape Fear (1991) and Casino (1995).

In these films, De Niro has primarily played charming sociopaths. Taxi Driver is particularly important to De Niro's career; his iconic performance as Travis Bickle shot him to stardom and forever linked De Niro's name with Bickle's famous "You talkin' to me?" monologue, which De Niro himself improvised.

"You talkin' to me?" Alone in his apartment, De Niro as Travis postures and practices his moves in front of the mirror

"You talkin' to me?" Alone in his apartment, De Niro as Travis postures and practices his moves in front of the mirror

In 1974, De Niro took part in Francis Coppola's The Godfather Part II and played young Don Vito Corleone. His performance earned him his first Academy Award of Best Supporting Actor.

In 1976 De Niro appeared, along with Gerard Depardieu, in Bernardo Bertolucci's epic biographical exploration of life during World War II, Novecento (1900), seen through the eyes of two Italian childhood friends at the opposite sides of society's hierarchy.

In 1978, De Niro played "Michael Vronsky" in the acclaimed Vietnam War film The Deer Hunter.

He was offered role of Cowboy in director Walter Hill's The Warriors (1979) but turned it down. The role went instead to Tom McKitterick.

Later film career

Praised for his commitment to roles (stemming from his background in Method acting), De Niro gained 60 pounds (27 kg) and learned how to box for his portrayal of Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull, ground his teeth for Cape Fear, lived in Sicily for The Godfather Part II, and learned to play the saxophone for New York, New York. He also put on weight and shaved his hairline to play Al Capone in The Untouchables.

Fearing he had become typecast in mob roles — another of which was Jewish gangster David "Noodles" Aaronson in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America (1984) — De Niro from the mid-1980s began expanding into occasional comedic roles, and has had much success there as well with such films as Brazil (1985), in which he had a cameo; the hit action-comedy Midnight Run (1988); and the film-and-sequel pairs Analyze This (1999) and Analyze That (2002), and Meet the Parents (2000) and Meet the Fockers (2004).

Other films include Falling in Love (1984), The Mission (1986), The Untouchables (1987), Heat (1995), Wag the Dog (1997) and Ronin (1998).

De Niro is considered[citation needed] a skilled observer of physical and trivial details, from the way a cigarette is held by a mobster in GoodFellas to the kind of shirt-jacket the character needed to wear in Raging Bull. In 1995 De Niro starred in Michael Mann's Heat, along with fellow actor Al Pacino. The duo drew much attention from fans as both have generally been compared throughout their careers. Though both Pacino and De Niro starred in The Godfather Part II, they shared no screen time.

De Niro had to turn down a role in The Departed (as the Jack Nicholson role) due to commitments preparing The Good Shepherd. He said "I wanted to. I wish I could've been able to, but I was preparing The Good Sheperd so much that I couldn't take the time to. I was trying to figure a way to do it while I was preparing. It just didn't seem possible."

In De Niro's next project, he directed and co-starred in The Good Shepherd (2006), also starring Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie. The movie also reunited him onscreen with Joe Pesci, with whom De Niro had starred in Raging Bull, GoodFellas and Casino.

On June 7, 2006, it was announced that De Niro donated his film archive, including scripts, costumes and props, to the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin.

De Niro has said that he is working with Martin Scorsese on a new project. "I'm trying to actually work..Eric Roth (screenwriter) and myself and Marty are working on a script now, trying to get it done."

Awards and honors

De Niro has won two Academy Awards: Best Actor for his role in Raging Bull; and Best Supporting Actor for The Godfather Part II.

De Niro and Marlon Brando are the only actors who won Academy Awards for portraying the same character: Brando won for playing the elderly Don Vito Corleone (though he declined the award) in The Godfather while De Niro later won the award for playing the young Vito in The Godfather Part II. Brando and De Niro did not work together on screen until The Score (2001). De Niro actually auditioned for the role of Sonny in the first Godfather[4] but the role was given to James Caan. When The Godfather Part II was in preproduction, the director, Francis Ford Coppola, remembered De Niro's audition, and cast him to play the young Vito Corleone. De Niro's performance is one of only four to win an Academy Award for working in a foreign language, as he primarily spoke Italian, with very few phrases in English ("I didn't come here to fight with you" and "I make him an offer he can't refuse").

Personal life

De Niro has been married twice. He has a stepdaughter, Drena (after the Drina river on the border between Bosnia and Serbia, described in Nobel laureate Ivo Andric's book Bridge on the Drina), and son Raphael with first wife Dianne Abbott, as well as twin sons Julian Henry and Aaron Kendrick (conceived by in vitro fertilization) from a long-term live-in relationship with former model Toukie Smith. Raphael, a former actor, now works in New York real estate. .

Since 1989, De Niro has been investing in the TriBeCa neighborhood in lower Manhattan. His capital ventures have included co-founding the film studio TriBeCa Productions, the hugely popular TriBeCa Film Festival, and the TriBeCa Grill, Nobu, and Layla restaurants that usually need advance reservations.

In February 1998, during a film shoot in France, he was hauled for nine hours by French police and questioned by a magistrate, over a prostitution ring. De Niro denied any involvement saying that he had never paid for sex, "and even if I had, it wouldn't have been a crime". The magistrate wanted to speak to him after his name was mentioned by one of the call girls. In an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde, he said, "I will never return to France. I will advise my friends against going to France", and he would "send your Legion of Honour back to the ambassador, as soon as possible". French judicial sources say that the actor is regarded as a potential witness, not a suspect. In 2003, Robert De Niro, with film director Woody Allen, jazz musician Wynton Marsalis and writer George Plimpton joined a pro-French tourism campaign as a direct response to anti-French sentiment in the US related to the Iraq invasion.

In 2004, De Niro re-married his second wife, Grace Hightower, a former flight attendant, at their estate near Marbletown in upstate New York. De Niro's has residences are on the east and west sides of Manhattan. Their son Elliot was born in 1998 and the couple filed for divorce shortly after his birth, although the action was never officially finalized.

De Niro, whose paternal great-grandparents emigrated from Ferrazzano, in the region of Molise, Italy, was due to be bestowed with honorary Italian citizenship at the Venice Film Festival in September 2004. However, the Sons of Italy lodged a protest with Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, claiming De Niro had damaged the image of Italians and Italian-Americans by frequently portraying them in criminal roles. Culture Minister Giuliano Urbani dismissed the objections and the ceremony was rescheduled to go forward in Rome in October. Controversy flared again when De Niro failed to show for two media appearances in Italy that month, which De Niro blamed on "serious communication problems" that weren't "handled properly" on his end, and stating, "The last thing I would want to do is offend anyone. I love Italy." The citizenship was conferred to De Niro on October 21, 2006, during the Rome Film Festival finale.

During a People Magazine interview, actor/comedian Jerry Lewis claimed that he was "going for Bobby's throat" after De Niro directed a slew of anti-Semitic epithets against Lewis. Despite the almost exact wording to Mel Gibson's remarks from 2006, De Niro has escaped the kind of controversy suffered by Gibson.

Academy Awards and Nominations

* 1974 — Won - Best Actor in a Supporting Role; The Godfather, Part II